Time to decide: Renew Fictionwise membership or try BoB. Any input?

[rixte]

Originally Posted by texasnightowl

Well, as an update to my original post, I still haven't made up my mind to renew or not. I think I'm leaning towards ... not. Especially with the change they made to the NYT bestseller books. I think I may use my current micropay balance and just back away.

That's my inclination as well, although I still hate BoB's navigation and how much of a pain it is to display the formats you want. As much as I hate it, I may actually start buying more from amazon or even sony.

[lioslaith]

Originally Posted by wheresmytea

I'm becoming more and more disenchanted with FW. The geographical restrictions are just becoming tedious. I changed my address to a US address, and that works when buying with micropay, but I can't buy much with a cc or paypal that has a 100% rebate on it, which to be honest was one of the main things that kept me there. They are really slow to get a lot of new releases out, especially the last 2 Sherrilyn Kenyons, I'm impatient, I want my books now dammit! Also, I don't know if it's just my inner cheapskate, but the rebates feel like they're getting smaller, especially the last two weeks.

I've bought a few books from BoB, but I really hate their website, it takes forever to load a page, but they do seem to get books out a lot quicker. I think they are also going to be getting more of my money in the future.

Been there, experiencing that. I have purchased a lot from FW since getting my Sony 505, but I'm hitting more and more geographical restrictions when I attempt to actually buy something that isn't a multi-format. So there goes all the great rebate deals I keep getting emails about. Today alone I had to flush almost $100 worth of books in my wishlist and in my cart as they all (every single one in the case of my cart) were now unavailable to me due to graphical restrictions. So I doubt I will be renewing my subscription to them when it expires as the discount on the multiformat books isn't worth it for me currently.

Especially annoying as I have all the books in one particular series and eagerly awaited the newest release. It arrived and wonders of wonders it was on a 100% rebate but when I attempted to purchase. Well you all must know what happened, I get a warning box plus in large block red capitals that the title is restricted to me. Does anyone else feel like they attempted to rob a bank or something when this happens to you? I don't know until I'm taken to the shopping cart that these ebooks aren't for sale to me, but when this happens I feel like looking around to see if the flying squad from Scotland Yard have screetched to a stop outside my door as if they are going to apprehending a dangerous criminal instead of an avid reader.

I then checked to find out when it would be released to the UK, checked with every UK based seller I could find and only one WHSmith actually sold titles by this author and couldn't find a clue to when the latest ebook would be available to purchase.

What's annoying is that you don't know until you place the book in your cart whether it is geographical restricted or not. At least when I browse through BooksOnBoard the little 'not available in your country' logo shows up before you click on the purchase button and so doesn't make you want to scream (as much) when you get taken to your cart and see all your choices are restricted as happened to me today.

Funnily enough though I can purchase the book I wanted in paperback from amazon and get it by tomorrow lunchtime if I wanted. But kinda defeats the whole reason behind purchasing my ereader in the first place.

in the UK, also known as Lesley-Ann, signing off for now to go practice my breathing and hopefully come back feeling a bit more Zen.

[bathos]

If you change your country of residence in your profile to 'US' you can buy the books.

You used to be able to pay with paypal UK but when I tried today it wouldn't let me. But it would let me pay with a UK credit card with all the normal UK details except that the country was US. It worked.

[geertm]

Originally Posted by lioslaith

What's annoying is that you don't know until you place the book in your cart whether it is geographical restricted or not. At least when I browse through BooksOnBoard the little 'not available in your country' logo shows up before you click on the purchase button and so doesn't make you want to scream (as much) when you get taken to your cart and see all your choices are restricted as happened to me today.

Fictionwise does mention the geographical restrictions in the description of the book. In very small print, underneath the different formats of the book.

You do know that at the moment it is not too difficult to circumvent the region restrictions at Fictionwise?
Change the country of your user profile to USA.
That way you can use micropay to pay for your books.
If you want to use your creditcard to pay for the books (for getting those rebates), than use a valid USA address (use google the look one up) instead of your regular address.

[lioslaith]

Originally Posted by geertm

Fictionwise does mention the geographical restrictions in the description of the book. In very small print, underneath the different formats of the book.

You do know that at the moment it is not too difficult to circumvent the region restrictions at Fictionwise?
Change the country of your user profile to USA.
That way you can use micropay to pay for your books.
If you want to use your creditcard to pay for the books (for getting those rebates), than use a valid USA address (use google the look one up) instead of your regular address.

Yeah, I went back and looked for the restrictions and your right, it is definitely small print. I might try the micropay workaround for the two books from the trilogy I was looking at. I was allowed to purchase book 1 but couldn't purchase books 2 & 3.

[wheresmytea]

Originally Posted by bathos

If you change your country of residence in your profile to 'US' you can buy the books.

You used to be able to pay with paypal UK but when I tried today it wouldn't let me. But it would let me pay with a UK credit card with all the normal UK details except that the country was US. It worked.

Hey, thanks for that, I just tried it and it worked! Yay!